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How do you all read the Bible?

philologos

I'm just curious, do any of you use a Bible reading plan, or do you just read from cover to cover, or choose certain books for certain times. I'm just curious to see how different people do it here.

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kelly1

Jakkass wrote: »

I'm just curious, do any of you use a Bible reading plan, or do you just read from cover to cover, or choose certain books for certain times. I'm just curious to see how different people do it here.

I'm generally not very good at reading the bible. I don't read it often enough and I don't have any kind of reading plan.

What I should really do is to meditate on the daily Gospel reading e.g.

http://www.usccb.org/nab/010710.shtml

God bless,
Noel.

homer911

I used to use "Every Day with Jesus", one of the Scripture Union series of Bible Reading Notes (www.scriptureunion.ie) but found that some of the questions arising in the bible passage weren't being answered for me in the notes (maybe this has changed recently)

Right now I'm tring to use Word Live. This includes an audio bible passage if you want, and a "Read the Bible in a Year" programme.
http://www.scriptureunion.org.uk/2981.id

You can also add it to iGoogle:

Add manually as RSS:
http://www.scriptureunion.org.uk/wordlive/24165.rss

Add automatically to iGoogle:
http://www.google.ie/ig/adde?hl=en&gl=ie&moduleurl=http://www.scriptureunion.org.uk/wordlive/24165.rss&source=imag

This is the first thing I see in the morning when I bring up my browser and try to make the time for it first...

Soul Winner

Jakkass wrote: »

I'm just curious, do any of you use a Bible reading plan, or do you just read from cover to cover, or choose certain books for certain times. I'm just curious to see how different people do it here.

"Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." 2 Timothy 2:15

The best way to read and understand Scripture is to rightly divide it. To do that we must first assume that on face value it means what it says. But if a particular verse is cloudy and hard to make any sense out of then we must either leave it to one side until the subject that the verse is speaking about has more light shed on it by other verses of scripture.

Take the first two verses of the Bible as an example. We read in Genesis 1:1

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

Then in Genesis 1:2 we read:

"And the earth was without form and void."

Now on face value it sounds as though the earth was created void and without form, but other verses of scripture tell us that this was not the case. Isaiah teaches that God did not create the earth to be a waste but to be inhabited.

"For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else." Isaiah 45:18

In Hebrew the word was in Genesis 1:2 is: (הָיָה) "Hayah" meaning: 'to come to pass', or 'to become' or even 'to be'.

So Genesis 1:2 should read:

"And the earth became without form and void." or better again "The earth became a waste and a desolation."

See the difference? If the earth was created to be a waste and a desolation then that contradicts what Isaiah said. So what we must do to reconcile both scriptures is to go with the verse that has the clearer definition and assume that the more ambiguous verse meant 'to become', or 'became' rather than it's other meaning to be. Always choose clarity over ambiguity.

So in this example we see that scripture clarifies itself. In Genesis 1:2 the translation is ambiguous, but Isaiah clears it up for us. If we apply this approach to all scripture then it becomes much easier to know what it is that the Scripture is actually saying. And if there are still areas that seem confusing and ambiguous then don't worry about them, just hold fast to what you know it is clear on, until further research and study sheds light on those other verses.

"For God is not the author of confusion,.." 1 Corinthians 14:33

That for me is the best and really the only way to know and understand scripture properly. Verses which are taken out of context to support a particular world view will lead to error. We must take the whole book and rightly divide it. Peter summed this approach up in one verse:

"Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation." 2 Peter 1:20

Plowman

This post has been deleted.

keano_afc

I must also confess to not reading nearly as much as I should. I used to refer to the Daily Bread, but got very little out of it. My work e mail account receives a mail every morning from UCB with the "word for today" and I've been really enjoying going through them.

Soul Winner

Plowman wrote: »

Unfortunately I also have a poor reading plan. I try to pick a book and read it through to the end. I prefer this method to reading passages here and there because then I can get some context. That said, I am in no position to cite-on-demand yet.

The worst way to read the Bible is to read it like you'd read a normal book. It is not a single book, but a collection of books, written by different people at different times and in diverse places. It's layout is not chronological, especially when you get passed the first five books. For instance, events that are recorded historically in I and II Kings/Chronicles are prophesied about later on in the major and minor prophets. So for someone who is not well versed in how we came to get our Bible, to read it through like a normal book would cause much confusion indeed.

I would recommend studying how it came to be in it's present state and how it got to us in the English speaking world before reading it through like that. That alone is a fascinating study in and of itself and there are many good resources available just be Googling on the Net that will give you a good overview of it.

Plowman

This post has been deleted.

philologos

I had used: http://www.bibleplan.org but I found a new one that divides the books of the Bible in to the following groups Epistles, Gospels, Prophesy, History, Psalms, Poetic, and Law one for each day of the week to get through the Bible in a year. I'm going to try it out for the next while, I just wanted to see how you all do it.

booksale

I dont have a specific plan. But I do tick the books I have finished and it may take me years to finish reading the whole Bible.

I am now reading Old Testament. But in between I would still read the New Testament and especially the Gospels.